Shortly after winning the 1990 U.S. Amateur, Phil Mickelson called Arnold Palmer in hopes of setting up a practice round with him at The Masters the following year.

Palmer said sure.

"We played a great round of golf," Mickelson recalled earlier this year. "We walked off the 18th tee about 100 yards, and he kind of grabs my arm and pulls me over and stops, and says, 'Right here. Right here.' 'What, Mr. Palmer?' '1961, I had a one-shot lead, I came over and shook somebody's hand, and he said 'Congratulations.' I never should have said thank you.

" 'I should have said it's not over.' "

A few minutes later it was. Palmer blocked a 7-iron into the greenside bunker, bladed his bunker shot over the green, putted from off the green to 15 feet and two-putted for a double bogey. Needing just a par on the final hole to become the first player to win back-to-back Masters, Palmer instead lost by one shot to Gary Player.

"He was still fuming about it 30 years later," Mickelson says.

At his core, Palmer, the man who is many things — enormously accessible common man; successful businessman; prominent advertising spokesman; talented golf course designer; and aviator — is fiercely competitive.

From childhood at Latrobe Country Club in Western Pennsylvania, when he started swinging clubs cut down by his father, Deacon, Palmer swung hard and fast in his search for triumph. He hit the ball with authority and for distance, ushering in an aggressive hitch-up-your-pants, go-for-broke, in-your-face power game rarely seen before in the often stoic and staid sport. Basically, he gripped it and ripped it long before John Daly was born.

While the swing of golf's King was not a model of aesthetics, it worked. And the drama it produced was both magnificent and tragic.

Starting with the 1955 Canadian Open, Palmer won 61 PGA Tour events, 11 international events and 10 Champions Tour events. Seven of his Tour wins came in major championships — the 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1964 Masters, the 1960 U.S .Open and the 1961 and 1962 British Open.

His defining moment came in the 1960 Open at Cherry Hills in Colorado. In a tie for 15th place entering the final round, Palmer was told by Bob Drum of the Pittsburgh Press that he was too far behind to win. Angered by the remark, Palmer drove the first green 346 yards away and made the first of four consecutive birdies. He added birdies on the sixth and seventh and shot a final-round 65 to complete a seven-stroke comeback victory.

The flip side came six years later in the U.S. Open at Olympic near San Francisco. Holding a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play, Palmer took aim at the tournament record and refused to play conservatively. In less than two hours, he dropped his entire advantage and the next day lost in an 18-hole playoff to Billy Casper.

When Palmer's best days behind him, his competitive fire was still front and center. Even without his golf clubs he was bloodthirsty for victory — as the USA Ryder Cup team he captained found out in 1975.

"Arnold is competitive, which I love, but we had a team meeting, and Arnold said, 'OK, guys, I want you to get out there, and I don't want them to win a point,' " Hale Irwin remembers. "And he really and truly didn't want them to win a point. That right there showed me that this guy takes no prisoners. If you get in his way he'll run over you. He'll pick you up after it's said and done, but he'll run over you.

"You always know where Arnold is coming from. There was never any pretense. His father raised a straightforward young man, and obviously Arnold played straightforward."

Palmer plays golf every day, still trying to get better, still trying to find golf's secret to a perfect swing. This Suzann Pettersen can attest to. The LPGA tour star lives near Bay Hill in Orlando where Palmer winters and regularly bumps into the golf icon on the driving range.

"To be able to get to know and kind of try to dig into Mr. Palmer's head, I mean, that's fun," she says. "He's like a grandpa out there. He's so nice, always friendly, always smiles, always signs autographs. He's always on the range. He's there every morning.

"Any time I go play and he's unhappy with his game, he will go get a few drivers from his garage and go hit some and he's like, 'I've got it!'

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